User blog:Snowstripe the Fierce/My Opinions on the Church Today
Hey guys, I'm Snowstripe the Fierce (call me Snow, will ya?), and I'm really happy I found this Wiki. Anyways, on with the Opinion! I idenitfy as a Lutheran Christian, and I have been since I was a child. I was raised in a Lutheran family, with only distant relations belonging to the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches. I went to a Lutheran elementary/junior high school from Preschool all the way to 8th grade. I learned, believed, and accepted everything my parents, family, friends, teachers, and pastors (we switched to multiple different churches) told me about our faith. I did just as was told, asked God for forgivness of my sins, and read the Bible as often as the next kid. Things were going smoothly. Until 3rd grade. This was the year I was introduced to the concept of evolution. My teacher at the time, Mr. K., told the whole class, and I quote: "...Some people believe we came from monkeys. Some people think we came from fish..." And my general reaction was "Now, who in the world would believe that? Crazy people." And I remained thinking that until fourth grade, and that was when our school started having this guy ome over to indoctrinate us in how the world was made and that those crazy "evolutionists" (yup they used that word) are trying to teach you otherwise. He was a funny guy, and I guess they hired him on purpose, because the little kids would accept it more if they got a laugh out of it. When I talked to my dad about it, he would tell me that he believed that God created evolution to help us survive as a species. And something clicked in my brain that made me realize that such a notion actually made a lot of sense. And from then on, I began to question what my teachers had been telling me about the concept of evolution. Here's just a few of the things the guy (I forget his name) would tell us: *Dinosaurs and humans lived together, and some dinosaurs were domesticated. They showed us some pottery that depicted a human riding a dinosaur, and after some research, I found that these pieces are called the Ica plates, which are widely believe to be a hoax.| I can't even with this one. Just can't even. *Evolutionists don't believe in a creator. | This one's wrong, because first off, I exist, and second, a lot of "evolutionists", or atheists, are agnostic, and simply think the idea of there being a God or gods is unlikely but not impossible. *Fossilization can take place very quickly, which would make the notion of the Earth being millions of years old null and void. (They showed us a cowboy boot that was "fossilized" for this one) | The boot depicted was actually either limestone or salt built up around a boot lost in a river bed. As you can see, their anti-evolutionary points were pretty pathetic, and definitely not backed by science. However, I never dared ask a question, or else people would start to question my faith. I put up with it, rolling my eyes every once in a while. I knew what I was being taught about evolution was wrong, but I didn't know how wrong until I actually looked it up on the computer. It was there that I realized that they were way off. I was being told that some people believe we came from monkeys, who turned into apes, who turned into humans. I learned that it was all primates evolved from the same common ancestor, which would fit in with the Noah's Flood story, because only two of each kind of animal survived. Something, once again, clicked in my head, which allowed me to fit in the Biblical narrative with the "evolutionary" standpoint. As the years went by, I never grew out of that standpoint, and the only way it changed was it expanded. My teachers would say that if you fell away from the Lutheran view, you'd only get worse and worse until you weren't a Christian anymore. This was false, because I believe that it's only strengthened my faith and made me became filled with awe at God's power. Eventually, I heard about these videos titled "Amazing Creatures that Defy Evolution", and after watching it, I can only say this. They would show a cool animal and say, "Now, how could that have evolved?" and I know see it as a logical fallacy. I believe it exists by another name, but I call it "argumentum ex complexionem", meaning "argument from compexity". Basically, it's saying that someone's wrong because they cannot comprehend how a complex object can be applied to a hypothesis. Meaning that it is the questioner's fault, not the fault of the hypothesis/theory or the hypothesizer, that an object cannot be applied. I'll put more on eventually, but thanks for reading what I have so far. Peace out, bruthas! Category:Blog posts Category:Blog posts